AMD Radeon R7 M260

The AMD Radeon R7 M260 is a lower mid-range DirectX 11 graphics card for laptops. Just like the older Radeon HD 8700M and 8600M series, it is based on the Mars chip (28nm GCN architecture) with 384 shader cores, 24 TMUs and 8 ROPs. The core is clocked at up to 715 MHz (128 bit version) or 980 MHz (64 bit version) and can access up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory (1000 MHz, 2000 MHz effective).

Performance

The performance of the 128 bit Radeon R7 M260 is just slightly below a GeForce 825M, while models using a 64 bit memory interface will be a bit slower. Current and demanding games of 2013/2014 can be played fluently only in low resolutions and detail settings. In older games, however, higher quality settings will be possible.

The 384 shaders can be used with OpenCL 1.2 for general-purpose calculations (as 6 compute units). Compared to old TeraScale 2 chips, the GCN-based Mars architecture offers improved performance in this framework.

Features

Features of the R7 M260 include video decoding for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Flash directly by the AMD GPU. Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos are compatible as well.

The R7 series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, the M265 can directly support multiple monitors using Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.

Other features include ZeroCore for reducing power consumption when the display is turned off and Power Gating to power down areas of the chip that are not used. PowerTune allows automatic overclocking and underclocking of the graphics card as long as the GPU is within its TDP limit. For example, the chip may be underclocked when running FurMark and OCCT, but will overclock in certain games like Lost Planet, Crysis or Resident Evil 5.

The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it allows audio output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.

Power consumption

The power consumption should be similar to the old Radeon HD 8670M or the Nvidia GeForce 825M. As a result, the R7 M260 is best suited for 13-inch notebooks or larger.

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.